"Whenever serious and competent people need to get things done in the real world, all considerations of tradition and protocol fly out the window."
— Neal Stephenson

"Rogues are preferable to imbeciles because sometimes they take a rest."
— Alexandre Dumas

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."
— George Eliot

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
— Groucho Marx (The Essential Groucho)

"So many books, so little time."
— Frank Zappa

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
— Oscar Wilde

"And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

"The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones."
— Joseph Joubert

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

"Only cops and vampires have to have an invitation to enter."
— Christopher Moore

"So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall."
— Roald Dahl

"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple."
— Dr. Seuss

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It's not."
— Dr. Seuss (The Lorax)

"The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last."
— Oscar Wilde

"The weather still continues charming."
— Oscar Wilde

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

"[...] the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' What did they call such young people in Goethe's Germany?"
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!'"
— Lewis Carroll

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said."
— A.A. Milne

"Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood."
— Jane Yolen

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."
— Ayn Rand

"TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public."
— Douglas Coupland (JPod)

"The difference between stupid and intelligent people – and this is true whether or not they are well-educated – is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. "
— Neal Stephenson (The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer)

"Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time."
— Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)

"Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny."
— Aristotle

"Anything can be misused. Furthermore, every individual has to assume responsibility for his or her own actions, even the poor and the young. A social system that decrees otherwise is inviting intellectual atrophy and spiritual stagnation."
— Tom Robbins (Villa Incognito)

"I never understood why Clark Kent was so hell bent on keeping Lois Lane in the dark."
— Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)

"A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest."
— C.S. Lewis

"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."
— Robert A. Heinlein

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."
— Jorge Luis Borges